Monthly Archives: February 2009

Promise me no promises, So will I not promise you: Keep we both our liberties, Never false and never true: Let us hold the die uncast, Free to come as free to go: For I cannot know your past, And of mine what can you know?

You, so warm, may once have been Warmer towards another one: I, so cold, may once have seen Sunlight, once have felt the sun: Who shall show us if it was Thus indeed in time of old? Fades the image from the glass, And the fortune is not told.

If you promised, you might grieve For lost liberty again: If I promised, I believe I should fret to break the chain. Let us be the friends we were, Nothing more but nothing less: Many thrive on frugal fare Who would perish of excess.

He had got, finally,to the forestof motives. There were noowls, or hunters. No Connie Chatterleysresting beautifullyon their backs, having casuallybrought socialismto England. Only ideas,and their opposites Like,he was reallynowhere.

God lay dead in heaven;Angels sang the hymn of the end;Purple winds went moaning,Their wings drip-drippingWith bloodThat fell upon the earth.It, groaning thing,Turned black and sank.Then from the far cavernsOf dead sinsCame monsters, livid with desire.They fought,Wrangled over the world,A morsel.But of all sadness this was sad —A woman’s arms tried to shieldThe head of a sleeping manFrom the jaws of the final beast.

The world vibrates, my sleepless nights discovered. The air conditioner hummed; I turned it off. The plumbing in the next apartment sang; I moved away, and found a town whose factories shuddered as they worked all night. The wires on the poles outside my windows quivered in an ecstasy stretched thin between horizons. I went to where no wires were; and there, as I lay still, a dragon tremor seized my darkened body, gnawed my heart, and murmured, I am you.

[by John Updike, first published in Telephone Poles and other poems, 1963]

Thou still unravished bride of quietness, Thou foster child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loath? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared, Pipe to the spirit dities of no tone. Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed? What little town by river or sea shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity. Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

A lady poet followed me homeAnd asked if I could keep herI repliedIt must be deniedFor I had no room in my freezer She engineered her stayOf relocation with playCharm and elocutionPraised this and thatAllowed a wee patCounted on evolutionI may be cheapAnd easy tooBut for female I’m hard-wiredAnd too It’s sort of coolThis once being the one that’s desiredThough I question her tasteHer need of rat wasteA too hasty fadeWill shatter shadesI cannot replaceBest to seeWhat she reweavesWhat treasure in her trundleThough it fracture my planI am but manAnd man is meant to bundle